ked the almost overmastering
desire to drink.

Ida had been right. He knew it, though the thought did not help to
allay his bitterness. She had spoken the truth: he was still pledged to
Maude. Mr. Falconer had paid the price demanded, and it was not his
fault if it had failed to save Sir Stephen from ruin; the sacrifice
Stafford had made had, at any rate, saved his father's good name from
shame and reproach. Maude's father had performed his part of the
bargain; Stafford had still to perform his. Ida was right; she had
pointed out to him his duty, and if there was a spark of manliness left
in him, he must do it.

He sat over the fire, close over it, as he had done in the backwoods
many a night, smoking the old brier pipe that had cheered him in his
hours of solitary watching, and thinking with a grim bitterness that it
would have been better for him if he had been knocked on the head the
night of the raid at Salisbury Plain. To be married to one woman, while
he loved another with all his heart and soul: it was a cruel fate. But,
cruel as it was, he had to bend to it. He would go straight to London
and find Maude, redeem his promise, and save his honour.

Mr. Groves came into the room with a bottle of the port, and Stafford
forced himself to show an interest in it and drink a glass or two.

"I suppose you'll be going up to the Villa to-morrow, sir?--I beg your
pardon, I mean my lord; and I must apologise for not calling you so."

"Not 'my lord,'" said Stafford. "I have never used the title, Groves.
Go up to the Villa? Why should I?" he asked, wearily. "It is closed,
isn't it?"

Mr. Groves looked at him with surprise.

"No, sir. Didn't you know? Mr. Falconer bought it; and he and Miss
Falconer have been staying there. She is there now."

Stafford turned away. Chance was making his hard road straight. After a
sleepless night, worse even than some of the worst he had spent in
Australia, and after a pretence at breakfast, he went slowly up to the
Villa. Last night, as he had held Ida in his arms, something of the old
brightness had come back to his face, the old light to his eyes; but he
looked haggard and wan now, like a man who had barely recovered from a
long and trying illness. He turned on the slope of the terrace and
looked down at the lake, lying dark and sullen under a cloudy sky; and
it seemed to him typical of his own life, of his own future, in which
there seemed not a streak of light. A servant came to me